This year's offering of Halloween season horror films includes AFI's annual screening of NOSFERATU with live musical accompaniment by Silent Orchestra; the opening night of the Spooky Movie Film Festival with special guest horror legend Herschell Gordon Lewis; the rom-zom-com classic, SHAUN OF THE DEAD; and a mini-retrospective surveying the greatest werewolf movies of all time. Awhooooooo!

AFI Member passes will be accepted at all screenings in the Halloween on Screen series unless otherwise indicated.

NOSFERATU, A SYMPHONY OF HORROR The Halloween Classic
One Night Only!

Casting a long and terrifying shadow over the genre, German silent-film master F.W. Murnau's uncredited appropriation of Bram Stoker's Dracula set the standard for all vampire flicks to come. Max Schreck's monstrous Count Orlock is singularly frightening, repulsive and beastly where Bela Lugosi was courtly and Christopher Lee seductive.

Evening's emcee: James White
James White has been an active member of the Washington media for over 30 years, and is currently a news anchor and reporter with WTOP Radio, and on-air host for Maryland Public Television (MPT).

From the demented mind of exploitation genius Herschell Gordon Lewis, this ultra low-budget 1964 film was an instant drive-in favorite that made all Northerners wary of vacationing in the Southern United States. This film revels in the grisly fate of three unwitting Yankee couples who've been falsely detoured to the Southern hick town of Pleasant Valley ("population: 2000"--get it?).What they don't know is that the twisted citizens of Pleasant Valley are vengeful ghosts of the Civil War, determined to dispatch their "guests" in deviously unpleasant ways. Tacky and tame by later standards, yet still absurdly shocking, this movie is the pure, funny-freaky essence of exploitation cinema, complete with the obligatory Playboy Playmate in the cast. With its crude direction, atrocious acting and delirious redneck flavor (love that sunny bluegrass soundtrack!), this is a milestone in splatter cinema. (Note courtesy of The Loft Cinema)

Tickets reserved and purchased online must be retrieved in person at the AFI Silver box office. The same credit card used online must be presented to the cashier to redeem your tickets.

AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON

John Landis's cult classic remains the touchstone for the modern horror-comedy hybrid, pairing the comedic talents of the director of ANIMAL HOUSE with the genius of make-up and special effects artist Rick Baker, who won an Oscar for his work here, including a werewolf transformation that must be seen to be believed! American students David Naughton and Griffin Dunne, hitchhiking across Europe but stuck for the moment in the grim north of England, stop in at local pub The Slaughtered Lamb where the locals are less than welcoming. Warned to beware the full moon and stick to the road, they disregard this advice and attempt a short cut across the moors. Bad decision! Naughton wakes days later in a London hospital, badly wounded in the "wolf" attack that killed Dunne. But he keeps seeing the ghost of his slaughtered friend in his increasingly bizarre dreams, who advises him to kill himself before the next full moon or ... you know.

Tickets reserved and purchased online must be retrieved in person at the AFI Silver box office. The same credit card used online must be presented to the cashier to redeem your tickets.

WEREWOLF OF LONDON

On an expedition to Tibet to find the rare marifasa lumina lupina, dashing botanist Henry Hull survives an attack by a bizarre half man/half beast, escaping with only a bite wound on his arm. Back in London with his prized plant specimen, Hull is visited by the mysterious Warner Oland, a doctor who seems to be an expert on werewolves, informing Hull that his rare plant can cure werewolf transformations, and that a werewolf seeks to destroy that which it most loves. Preposterous, thinks Hull, a man of science. Until the next full moon arrives, and he realizes what he has become....

Tickets reserved and purchased online must be retrieved in person at the AFI Silver box office. The same credit card used online must be presented to the cashier to redeem your tickets.

THE WOLFMAN

"Even a man who is pure in heart and says his prayers by night may become a wolf when the wolfbane blooms and the autumn moon is bright." After a run-in with creepy carny gypsy Bela Lugosi, nice-guy Lon Chaney Jr. and friends are attacked in the woods by an enormous wolf. Chaney clubs it with his cane, suffering a bite wound in the process, but the next morning the police find no wolf, only a dead Lugosi. That night Chaney discovers his terrible misfortune when he transforms into ...The Wolf Man! As the cursed Larry Talbot, the hangdog Chaney makes for one of the most sympathetic of screen monsters. The outstanding supporting cast includes Claude Rains, Warren William, Ralph Bellamy and Maria Ouspenskaya.

Tickets reserved and purchased online must be retrieved in person at the AFI Silver box office. The same credit card used online must be presented to the cashier to redeem your tickets.

SHAUN OF THE DEADWARNING: Zombies from the Silver Spring Zombie Walk have threatened to attend the October 24 show!

A surprise hit in 2004 and an enduring cult item since, Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg's "rom-zom-com"--a romantic comedy, with zombies--remains one of the few successful examples of a film that achieves the tricky balance of horror and comedy. Dumped by his girlfriend, slacker appliance salesman Pegg is so down in the dumps he fails to notice the zombie plague taking over his London neighborhood until one pops up in his backyard. Fortunately, he and his couch potato flatmate Nick Frost prove to be ace zombie dispatchers, when they round up their remaining loved ones to make a final stand at their local pub, the Winchester.

Saturday, October 24, 10:00; Saturday, October 31, 9:45; Saturday, October 31, 9:45, 11:30 - late show just added!

Tickets reserved and purchased online must be retrieved in person at the AFI Silver box office. The same credit card used online must be presented to the cashier to redeem your tickets.

THE HOWLING

After a harrowing experience covering a serial killer story, TV newswoman Dee Wallace visits a woodland retreat/ therapy center called "The Colony" at the suggestion of psychiatrist Patrick Macnee. But the oddball, touchy-feely therapy sessions discomfort Wallace, as do the fierce animal sounds outside her cabin at night. The fur starts flying once she discovers her fellow campers' secret, which will be the scoop of the century for Wallace... if she can survive to tell the tale.

Tickets reserved and purchased online must be retrieved in person at the AFI Silver box office. The same credit card used online must be presented to the cashier to redeem your tickets.

WOLFEN

Burnt-out New York City cop Albert Finney investigates the grisly and mysterious murder of a politically connected industrialist, his wife and chauffeur. Finney's partner Diane Venora suspects terrorism, but coroner Gregory Hines turns up forensic evidence that they were killed by wolves. But there are no wolves in New York City ...or are there? Michael Wadleigh's (WOODSTOCK) inventive and intelligent thriller flirts with the lycanthropy hypothesis on its way to an even more bizarre revelation. The film's wolf's-eye-view camerawork and visual effects, plus James Horner's pounding, suspenseful score pre-date the very similar visuals of PREDATOR (1987) and Horner's own score for ALIENS (1986).

Tickets reserved and purchased online must be retrieved in person at the AFI Silver box office. The same credit card used online must be presented to the cashier to redeem your tickets.

Back By Popular Demand! An Encore Presentation ofEVERY OTHER DAY IS HALLOWEEN In Person: Director Curtis Prather and Count Gore De Vol!Tickets only $5!

This comedic documentary chronicles the career and legacy of Dick Dyszel, whose television alter-egos, "Count Gore De Vol," "Captain 20" and "Bozo the Clown" helped raise generations of Washingtonians in the 1970s and 1980s (almost a half-million "Channel 20 Club Cards" were distributed during this time). Featuring rare one-of-a-kind footage and interviews with Dick Dyszel, critic Arch Campbell, writer Steve Niles, filmmaker Jeff Krulik, "scream-queens" Eleanor Herman and Leanna Chamish, as well as a new generation of television "horror hosts" including John Dimes ("Dr. Sarcofiguy") and Jerry Moore II ("Karlos Borloff"), this doc's universal appeal goes beyond the Beltway to show how art can sometimes come back to re-influence itself, and how the best days will always be ahead.